Kubota (Japanese) Garden in Seattle — Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 Review

The Zeiss Loxia lenses are awesome. I now own the 21mm, 35mm, and 50mm lenses. They are easily among my favorite lenses for Sony full frame cameras due to the fact that they are compact, sharp, well built, easy to use, and not to mention their amazing image quality. Check out my review on the 35mm here.

Pros:

Compact.

Feels nice in the hand.

f/2.8.

The Sony A7R II recognizes it and auto zooms in when you turn the dial.

Image quality.

Pleasing bokeh.

Distortion isn’t too bad.

Sharp — even at f/2.8.

Infinity focus works well.

Manual focus.

Cons:

The hood like all Loxia’s feels thing and could bend easily when attaching it or removing it.

Image tends to soften at the edges at wider apertures — like all lenses, but it is noticeable without pixel peeping.

Price — it’s pricey compared to the other Loxia lenses.

Distortion is there, but not too bad.

Vignetting at f/2.8, but clears up as you stop down.

Minimum focusing distance is farther than I like.

Manual focus, but isn’t that the appeal?

For a short bit, I owned the Sony / Zeiss 16–35mm f/4 lens. That lens was awful and soft. I wouldn’t recommend that lens to anyone! The Loxia 21mm however, is awesome!

On to the photos!

These were all shot on a Sony A7R II, processed in Capture One Pro 9 (nothing else), and then resized for the web.